Jacques Vallée

SCIENTIST | AUTHOR | HIGH-TECH INVESTOR

Jacques Vallée

SCIENTIST | AUTHOR | HIGH-TECH INVESTOR

Wonders in the Sky

by Jacques Vallée & Chris Aubeck (2010) “That, I believe, is true science: to follow the data wherever they lead.”

“Their rigorous scientific insistence allows Vallée and Aubeck to retain the most challenging and interesting aspects of these events without the distraction of premature commitment to any particular interpretation. A willingness to combine documentary research, the heart of humanities scholarship, with physical and astrophysical knowledge is rare.”

Professor David Hufford, Penn State College of Medicine, and Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania.

Jacques F. Vallée is a principal at Documatica Financial, LLC and a diversified investor with a passion for technology startups in space development, medical equipment and information management. He earned a Bachelors Degree in mathematics from the Sorbonne, a Masters Degree in astrophysics from Lille University and a PhD in Computer Science /AI from Northwestern University (1967).

Based in Silicon Valley, Jacques has served as a founder and general partner in five venture funds, including NASA’s “Red Planet Capital”. Among the companies for which he spearheaded early-stage financings, fourteen achieved IPOs, notably Electronics for Imaging, Accuray Systems (developers of the “Cyberknife” for cancer surgery), NeoPhotonics (Nanotechnology for optical networks), Mercury Interactive, P-Com, Isocor, Regeneration Technologies, Harmonic Lightwaves, Ixys, Integrated Packaging, E.Piphany, Sangstat Medical, Com21 and Synaptic Pharmaceuticals, specialized in neurotransmitter biology. He served as a member of the Board of Directors of many of these firms.

Other companies financed by Jacques (in particular, HandyLab that produced an instrument recognized as “transformative for oncology”) were successfully acquired by Becton-Dickinson, Intel, Lucent, AOL, Cisco, Wilson Greatbatch and Intuitive Surgical.

In his early career Jacques worked at Paris Observatory and at the astronomy department of the University of Texas in Austin, where he co-developed the first computer-based map of planet Mars. Moving to California after management positions with Shell and RCA, he implemented (with Jake Feinler) the first Network Information Center on the Arpanet and later served as a principal investigator for DARPA and NSF. Jacques has published several textbooks about computer networking and has maintained a long-term interest in unidentified flying objects, currently (2019) serving on the expert committee of the French CNES tasked with studying such reports. He received the Jules Verne Prize for his first science-fiction novel (in French). He resides between San Francisco and Paris. He has two children and three grandchildren.